The Bar, Continued

Jon liked this sort of work, he knew that he was so well suited for it. Mathematically talented, but strong in verbal skills and talented in music, he had as good a chance as any of figuring out the rosetta stone for this new language. He was doubly suited to such work by personality. Quiet, standoff-ish, some would call him a hermit. He could spend hours with a computer trying algorithms that might shed light on some encryption problem.

Lately his nights had been disturbed by violent dreams. He dreamt of jungle carnivores, and saw terrifying images of his father being killing. Even more disturbing was the fact that he seemed to take on the role of hunter in his dreams.

Outside the bar, the blimp had dropped an anchor line, it now faced into a stiff breeze and was using its props as windmills, recharging its fuel cells. It kept a search light focused on its anchor. The white beam stood clearly defined in the misty gloom.

The blimp itself was alive flashing beer and soda advertisements. Its insane glow filtered through the window behind Jon like a reverse bar light. Christine entered the bar and went directly to where Jon was sitting. She sat down and he made only a slight grunt that sounded like "hi".

"What are you working on?" she asked.

"Same thing." he replied.

"Well what? We haven’t had a chance to compare notes since we mailed each other all those times before the expedition. Were finally close, and together, lets knock heads on this. We talked more by e-mail."

The Kiosks around them were competing with flashing adds, Christine opened her note book to pull up her notes. Jon stared at her blankly. She smelled good and he was rather nervous now. Email had been much easier he thought.

"OK, I’ll start then. I’ve got nothing." she said pointedly. She looked at Jon and he still said nothing. "There is simply no historical reference. I am beginning to wonder if it is an alphabet or a doodle." She looked sideways at him to see a response, his brow scrunched a little. "It could be an artist just rambling on with shapes and forms." He tilted his head back wondering why she would come all this way if she didn’t believe it was a true alphabet. Jon went back to looking at his notebook. "Seriously", she said, "what if someone from the future tried to figure out Andy Wharhol, or Doctor Sues, with no frame of reference. Like the science fiction story where the future archeologist thought that Mickey Mouse was one of our deities. Is it possible that we are seeing hieroglyphics, when all it really was meant to be was decoration?"

Jon looked up from his book, "What?!" he stared as if seeing Christine for the first time ever and said; "Back up, wait a minute, Andy Warhol, Doctor Sues? What the fuck are you talking about?" Their eyes met and paused, eventually Jon looked down at his note book and spoke.

"No, I don’t believe that is possible. Your an anthropologist, surely you don’t think these tribesmen would have built a pyramid, and filled it with nonsensical symbols cleverly disguised as a code? Then built a small village around the temple, filled with pseudo-code? Even if that were the case, eventually it would have taken on some symbolism. There is repetition in most of the carvings. We’ve both seen the list of characters, and the sentences on the other walls. There had to be some symbolic meaning to those characters. I believe that there are sentences on the walls in that pyramid. Even if initially these symbols started their existence as art, over the course of several generations some meaning would have finally stuck to them."

"Why not, why couldn’t it be simply art?" She asked.

Jon pointed to the screen on one of the kiosks, a short swarthy local stood in front of the screen pointing his index finger at virtual aliens, squeezing his finger to fire virtual laser blasts at the virtual star beasts.

"Look at the video game that man’s playing, he’s shooting aliens. Look behind the aliens, there is a control panel. This game is depicting the inside of a UFO. You see the writing on that control panel? What does it say?"

She looked at the screen, the man was furiously shooting aliens, behind one of the aliens she caught a glimpse of the UFO’s controls, the writing was all gibberish. There were garishly colored buttons and keyboards. The video game designer had assumed that alien writing would look like Arabic. The aliens themselves looked rather American, in a Martian sort of way.

"I see it, it sort of looks like Chinese or Russian, doesn’t say anything probably, its just a video game. The game designers came up with some cool looking symbols, just like I said, characters as artwork." Christine held up one finger in the international symbol for ‘please wait a minute’ as she got up to buy a drink.

Lesse was sitting at the bar rather well lubed, but still quite lucid. He hadn’t had a chance to really meet his two traveling companions. He wasn’t really good at math in school, but the arithmetic here was simple. One woman, two men. He decided we would have to do something about all this competition, besides the two were looking quite cozy over there. "Perhaps" he thought, "I should look for a way to join this conversation."

Christine walked up to Lesse with a big buxom smile. "Hi Lesse, Why don’t you join us?" Splitting her gaze between Lesse and the bar tender, she waved some Mexican Pesos she had gotten stuck with at the Mexico City Air Port. "I want to spend these while there still worth something."

Lesse laughed out loud and picked up his beer, making a move toward the table where Jon sat. "If the bar tender won’t take them, hang onto ‘em , they still make good toilet paper."

Jon looked up briefly, his eyes were tired and he decided to play some music. He played a Rockmonanofv concerto on his notebook, setting it against the wall out of the way, where it could play lightly and project for their little table. The room got slightly louder and a little more chaotic.

"Well, I see you and Christine seem to be getting along?" Lesse felt out the mood at the table. Jon didn’t even catch the innuendo.

As Christine sat down, Jon began to speak to Christine. "Don’t you see a major difference between the game and the alphabet?"

"Huh?" Christine looked bemused for a second then remembered the alien writing in the video game. "Yeah, and no, It was a simple question; Why couldn’t these tribesmen used characters as simple art? Just like the video game, a nonsensical language just as artwork? I am not saying I believe that, but why not, you said it was impossible."

"Highly improbably." Jon answered, "We are used to the notion today that there is an infinite number of alphabets, codes, symbolic representations of all sort. Everyone has an alphabet. We may not be able to understand it, but we know that everyone has an alphabet. We see garbled designs on a UFO control panel and assume that it is an alphabet.

These people not only developed an alphabet, they developed one of the first. They made up an alphabet. Think of it, someone carved that stuff in stone. Of course its art.

It is possible that during the creation of this alphabet, the meanings were ambiguous, but eventually some of the symbols would have to take on meaning for someone. Thus it is an alphabet."

"I guess I agree with most of that." Christine replied, "Your right, it is an old set of symbols, as old or possibly older than the pyramid. Just creating a group of symbols like that would be an advancement. So, what do they stand for?" She looked down at Jon’s notebook, "Can I make a quick call? It’s on continent." Jon slid the book over to her, she closed the its plastic lid and Rokmonanof became muffled. Lesse looked as if he was just about to speak, Christine took the book stood up, she walked over to a quiet corner of the bar to dial. Both men watched her walk away, they both spent a little too much time watching her walk away. They both looked back at each other knowingly. Jon looked down secretly wishing for his computer. The conversation ended without starting. Lesse looked over at Christine.

Lesse stood up feeling a bit timbery from alcohol. He looked down at Jon who was now feeling a bit naked without his ever present notebook. In the corner Christine found the folder she was looking for, it was buried under a virtual pile of junk. Within minutes the notebook was dialing her friend Fatty in Brasilia. He was a Mexican post doc student studying endangered languages and cultures of the rain forest. She could see the two men looking at each other over at their table, they didn’t seem to be talking much. AS Lesse got up, she looked down to see a CALL-RECALL appear on the little screen, so she accepted and waited.

John looked up at Lesse and wondered what to do, he couldn’t think of anything to talk about so he just looked out the window at the flashing blimp. Lesse teetered away to the bar where he promptly got into an argument with one of the locals.

"Sixty Five!" Lesse could be heard yelling at one of the dark young men at the bar. "Arrrgh, the things you see when you don’t have your gun." he growled. The young man shook his head "no" and held his ground, whatever that might be. "Your just lucky I don’t have anything to throw at you." Lesse said a little quieter.

Christine had Fatty on the notebook. He was talking from a Kiosk in another bar in Brasilia. She was asking him to come and join their expedition. He was skeptical, it seemed haphazardly thrown together and he had a bad feeling about it.

Over at the bar Lesse was missing, along with his new friend and arguing partner. Jon sat in the corner watching the blimp while Christine had his notebook sequestered. After few minutes the blimp began to float up and away. The dangling steel tank barely wobbled, hanging plumb from the belly of the airship. After a few minutes the lights shut off and it went black. Somewhere in the night sky the air ship slid silently. The stars were brilliant.

Fatty’s Last Night Out.

Fatty had a good long day of avoidance ahead. If you can’t finish your thesis you should read another book. Better still, go on sabbatical for field research. He had used the last of his post doc grants and the student loan wolves would soon be knocking. Time had run short and he had spent the entire vacation mucking about with an ex-prostitute.

There is nothing worse than an ex anything he thought. Ex smoker, ex drinker. It would have been simpler if her price were still simply monetary. For four months he hadn’t written a damn thing, partially because Rio didn’t really have any endangered languages, unless you count his drunken Portugese.

He was lying in bed in the late afternoon, he heard the voice of his lady friend outside the door of his flat; Knocking and calling his name. He slid out of bed and quietly crept up to the door, looking through the peep hole he saw her standing there impatiently. She was holding a grocery bag and adjusting her dress, probably knowing exactly what he was doing.

Juan carefully slid back into the bedroom and got dressed, then crept out the window onto the fire escape, then down to the road. He left the bitter sweet temptress behind and headed for the one place he could avoid her, the bar where she used to work.

Down to the road he was on his way quickly before she tired of waiting and caught him on the street in front of the apartment. Ducking through the dark Rio slum, he passed an old store front that had long since had its windows barred and painted. He knew that inside there was a quasi-legal abortion clinic. Technically abortion was now illegal in most of Brazil. This did not stop people from terminating pregnancies in a country where the majority was under 25 years old, and a homeless teenager was civic detriment. The authorities looked the other way. Many of the powers that be privately wished that abortion was legal and Catholicism was not.

Two gringo tourists walked by arm in arm, oblivious to the clinic near by. They were obviously way off track; way, way off track. A police car came around the corner keeping a watchful eye on the tourists lest they get into trouble and thus ruin the city’s image in some developed country.

He walked on and thought about Lola, and the night he could have had with her, but he felt the urge to spend the night exploring. As he rounded a corner two pre-teens confronted him with a knife. They spat commands at him in broken English and he swore back at them in Portuguese and Spanish. Just moments before he was thinking about Lola and a night of potential love making, now he was faced with possible death.

The two youths were slim and short, little ragmops smelling of body odor and smoke. The only thing more objectionable than their appearance was their language. As they insulted Juan’s mother and general lineage, they made a series of demands, money, wallet, watch, NOW! The taller boy waved the knife which Juan now realized was actually a sharpened screwdriver. When they demanded his watch Juan interrupted with his best possible Portuguese, "I don’t have any money, and I pawned my watch two days ago!"

The two preteens looked to each other slowly, knowingly and laughed again. It was a private laugh, the laugh that conspirators share on some secret, it could be mistaken for an inside joke but this laugh was somehow more disturbing. as if to suggest that there was only one bit of booty that Juan could provide.

Suddenly Juan realized that he was to be the nights entertainment. They intended to kill him. It had been rumored for years that there was a death cult growing among the homeless youth of Rio. Juan had always thought that it was partially an urban myth; The homeless youth of Rio were reviving the death cult of Kali, bastardized to include Sangria and some sort of inverted Christianity. It was a fact that homeless kids were treated like vermin. They were rounded up and jailed. Many believed that children without guardians were put to death.

It is no leap of logic to imagine that such an environment would create a violent backlash among the kids, all it would take is a match to light the fire. Allegedly there was a young man who congealed all of this into a type of religion. This person was said to be the offspring of diplomats. Young, worldly, multi lingual, ambiguously dark skinned, intelligent, dangerously articulate, and sick; This young man was able to explain a of death cult in modern terms. Combining elements of religions that had been refined over centuries, and hatreds were probably much older, he was the spark for the tinder.

He taught his followers that souls were wise, souls knew when they were tired. The premise of this religion was that some people were destined to die, their soul’s would find a situation that would lead to this per-determined death. If it took murder to bring this about, it was unfortunate, but necessary. This way the person will not be shamed by suicide. The soul can continue on its journey. And if some of that departed souls money should stay with the living, so much the better.

One hell of an urban myth, Juan now began to realize that some urban myths create their own reality.

As all these thoughts raced through Juan’s brain, the two little serpents moved closer. They began to move slowly, almost as if they were dancing. The leader turned the sharpened screwdriver around in his hand so that he no longer pointed at it Juan, but held tightly in his fist pointing down. Slowly he raised the screwdriver over his head, and held it ready to bring the spike straight down on Juan’s head.

Juan turned to run and was blinded by a searing spot light. A siren wailed and his feat began to slow down. As abruptly as his life had been threatened, his consciousness began to slip away from him. His legs felt like they were stuck in tar. He fell to the pavement, his last conscious thoughts were the realization that a police officer was standing over him, he barely recognized the cop from the squad car that had passed him only minutes ago as he walked by the abortion clinic. As he faded into unconsciousness he wondered if this was a good turn of events.

A few minutes later Juan began to regain consciousness. He was laying propped up against a building. He looked around as his vision returned to normal. His wallet and passport lay on the side walk next to him, next to the curb a police car was parked with all of its lights out. He had awoke just in time to see the police dumping the body of one of his attackers into the back of a trash truck. The body plopped into the truck with a thud and the lid closed. As the truck pulled away, the cops turned toward him, Juan decided to play possum, pretending to still be unconscious.

One of the cops approached and nudged him with a polished jack boot. The cop spoke to Juan in Spanish, "Get up".

Juan looked up at the cop and did his best to look groggy, appearing to just wake up. He did not want the police to know that he had seen them dump a body into a trash truck. The cop bent down and picked up Juan’s wallet and papers, he handed them to Juan.

"You were attacked, sir, what were you doing out in this neighbor hood so late? Were you looking for something perhaps?" The policeman’s tone was a little sarcastic, obviously fishing to see if Juan was himself up to no good.

"I am a graduate student from the University of Mexico City, I am here researching the languages of Brazil." Juan said half lying, rubbing his head as the sleeping gas dissipated through his system. "My apartment is not far from here, I was walking down to the strip for a drink, I cut through this neighbor hood, I really had no idea it was this bad here at night." Juan through the last remark in to worry the police, ever cautious of the reputation their city had.

"I see, so you don’t really frequent this area then?" Without waiting for a reply the policeman continued. "You were attacked by two mean juveniles, we took care of them and they wont be bother you again. We saw to that. Perhaps you would like a ride to your destination? Just to be certain you get there safely."

Juan was scared shitless now. He had just witnessed a police execution, granted the two little animals were probably going to kill him, but still, he had seen a murder, and was scared that he was next. Yet, to turn down the police would be to certainly admit that he was in this neighborhood with some sort of motive. He weighed his options and decided to go along with the police. He got up shaking still from the sleeping gas. One of the police officers guided him to the car and placed him in the back seat. There were no door handles and the two policemen were separated from him by bullet proof glass.

Once inside a speaker popped and the driver asked Juan where exactly he was going. He told them the name of the bar and the street he was headed to. The bar was in a neighbor hood only slightly better than the one he was in.

The car was off and in minutes they were in front of the bar. One of the policemen got out and let Juan out of the back seat. "Senior" he said, "Perhaps you should take a taxi home, no? You may not be so lucky next time." The two police got in the car and left Juan to drink, spend money, buy a prostitute, or whatever else it was tourists were supposed to do. As he was walking into the bar his watch rattled, vibrating his wrist and letting him know that his friend Christine was calling him from Itatuba. He continued into the noisy bar and called her back from one of the Kiosks.

"He Fatty!" She called to him over the phone. She was one of the few people who could call him that and that was only because he had called himself that and explicitly allowed her to call him that. "What's the matter you look worried or something."

"Well," He drew a breath and let it out slowly, " I just got mugged by a death cult, knocked out by police sleeping gas, witnessed a police execution, and got a ride to the bar from those same police, and now I am ready to dance the night away. How about yourself?"

"Wow, I just love Rio, never a dull moment." She said without missing a beat. "Listen Juan, what are you doing?"

"I told you, it involves tequila and loose women."

"I know that silly, I wasn’t going to even bother asking about your plans for tonight, I mean over the next couple of weeks. ‘Cause if your not busy, I could use you out here, and we’d pay you."

"Doing what?" Juan asked. "And where, and why for that matter, and how much while your at it?"

Christine explained the expedition to him. She told him where the funding was coming from, about the pyramid in the rain forest. She told him about the alphabet carved into its interior. She tried to explain the mystery of the alphabet to him, how old it might be, the natives in the surrounding villages. She even mentioned the three symbols that looked like mathematical graphs, three basic functions complete with evidence of Forrier Synthesis. At this point he had to stop her, not knowing at all what she was talking about. She explained that there appeared to be a graph of three basic functions, these graphs were squiggly in just the right places to suggest advanced calculus.

She even explained Lesse’s theory that the apparent sine wave was actually a simplistic rendition of breasts, nice curvaceous female breasts, the apparent square wave was a simplistic depiction of volcanoes, and the apparent triangle wave was probably just some stoned native doodling. His theory was just as valid since the pyramid obviously pre-dated Renee Des Cartes, let alone the Cartesian coordinate system he developed. She never mentioned to Juan that she had caught herself thinking about one of the symbols every time she had sex.

Juan took all this in and said skeptically, "Well, I could use the money, and I do have just enough time before I need to be back at the university. I guess I can go, when do you want me to come?"

"Tomorrow she answered. I will set up the plane tickets and leave you a message. Expect the plane to leave no later than ten o’clock AM. Bring your clothes, a notebook, whatever you need for research. Don’t worry about the accommodations, I have a deep pocket, your tent will be top of the line." She added this last one have joking. It was the truth of coarse, they would be living in tents for a while, as far as top of the line tents, she wasn’t sure there was such a thing.

"Listen babe, before I leave for a trip like this I need to do some shopping. Why don’tcha just deposit some of that money in my account tonight?"

"No problem, it’ll be there as soon as we hang up. Listen, I gotta go, this is someone else’s notebook. I’ll see ya tomorrow."

The screen went blank. After about 15 minutes and a couple of drinks Juan checked his account.

"Whoo-hoo!" Juan stood and did a victory dance. A whole summer, in fact a whole school year wasted, maybe more, and saved at the last minute. He got money, and a chance to study an archaic language. Research, money, the finishing touch on his dissertation, saved at the last minute. He kept repeating these thoughts in his head.

He set about spending some of his new money in celebration. He sat down at the bar and ordered three beers. The two people sitting next to him looked at him smiled like mestizo jack-o-lanterns, missing teeth, missing maybe more than teeth.

"What? These are for me! I suppose you want one too? Barkeep get these two a drink." The old man next to him smiled a big semi-toothy grin.

"Mhn mummba mmummmaamm mummba." The old man mumbled his thanks, smiling from ear to ear. In the corner a Rastafarian stood up and began throwing imaginary fast pitches at an imaginary batter. He made imaginary hand signals at an imaginary catcher. After the imaginary batter was struck out the Rastafarian sat back down and began ripping up a small piece of paper while mummbling obscenities at the poor little scrap of napkin, even though the paper had aparently done nothing to him.

On the other side of the bar a well dressed man stood in front of a mirror. He was well dressed, but shabby, as if he stepped out of middle class suburb three months ago and hadn’t cleaned up since. He stood in front of a mirror in his Burckenstocks and a nice button down shirt that badly needed washing. Up until this point he had been facing a mirror, hands outstretched to heaven, praying to something. When he heard Juan buy two drinks for the other bar flies he stopped his communion and turned toward Juan with the huge puppy dog eyes.

Juan looked from the freaky rastafarian to the wing-nut in sandals praying to a mirror and hesitated for a moment. "Oh hell, get the house a round."

Juan walked back to a kiosk, punched some keys and played his favorite bar mix. Throughout the next few hours the rastafarian rocked to decades old classic rock, during the solos the GQ panhandler would stand and pray to something in the mirror. The bar filled up as the night went on and Juan partied to excess in his own private carnival of the bizarre.

Knocking. Loud knocking. Then pounding, rhythmic pounding in his temples. Then the knocking began again. Knocking at the door of his apartment, pounding in his scull, knocking and pounding.

"Juan, are you in there?" His lady friend was growing impatient again. "Juan!" Near screeching now, "JUAN! There is a delivery guy out here!"

Juan got out of bed and spun toward the door very hung over. He opened the door, sweating with effort. Outside a UPS delivery guy stood next to his lady friend. He looked at the dolly and saw a new notebook on top. Sometime last night he had ordered supplies and spared no expense.

Lola walked by him directly into the living room looking around as if inspecting. Juan singed for the boxes and turned toward Lola as the door closed. She was upset, but looking at the new computer, she held her tongue. She could smell stale tequila, and she could also smell money. Somehow Juan had scored some cash and she wasn’t about to piss him off now.

He looked around his apartment to see that most of his valuables had been stashed. He felt in his pocket and found the paper work from the storage facility where his few prized possessions now waited. Most of the rest of the stuff could wait here.

"Where were you last night honey? I was going to make dinner for you." Her look softened and she went to the kitchen and began doing little tasks, preparing to make breakfast for him. Juan just shrugged. He went to take a shower and get ready to leave.

By the time he was cleaned and dressed Lola had cleaned enough dished in his disheveled kitchen to begin making dinner. He ripped the notebook out of the box and went into the next room to call a cab.

Minutes later she walked into the living room with a plate of eggs and toast. He took one look at the runny eggs and his stomach turned. There was a knock at the door.

Lola saw him grab a duffel bag from the bedroom and knowing that he was leaving she blew up. He let the cab driver in and gestured to the boxes on the floor. As Juan and the cabby handled the boxes out the door Lola spewed insults stamping her foot and cussing rhythmically in a quick staccato as only a Spanish speaking woman can. She insulted him, she called him a lousy good for nothing louse. She insulted his mother, she insinuated that his mother descended from a dog, she suggested that his mother was a dog, she even insulted his mothers dog.

As he left the front lobby of his apartment building he could still hear her upstairs fuming up a dark cloud of obscenities and vulgarities that wafted behind him on the humid morning air and hung over the building like dark smoke, a turbulent fog of insults that eventually blew out to sea and formed the center of some violent tropical storm.

The cab sped him off to the airport. His adventure was beginning. He leaned back in the threadbare seat and made a satisfied sigh. He saw the cabbies eyes in the rear view mirror. "Hey Hombre, you got any aspirin up there?"